It was this sort of day at Titchwell on the North Norfolk coast:

And this sort of day:

And on the beach, once you walked 100 metres from the end of the reserve path, you were almost on your own:

Three birds stood out in the day. There were beautiful pintails, which are right up there in the echelons of good-looking ducks:

They were swimming this way, and that:

And like gadwall and teal, they tend to go through life in male and female pairs.

They eat off the bottom of shallow water, the male on the right and the female on the left. Only the male is really pintailed:

Then there was a turnstone on the beach, which I suspect most people never noticed. In my best shot, the wind had got to it:

As I said, though, I went for sanderling. And that wall down that wide-open, almost-empty beach was to find them. And we did. The photos are not 100%, but you will note the sea is sharp: the birds were faster. These two pictures capture their beautiful essence as they rush along the shoreline in search of food, literally on the edge of the tide.

I love that reflection.

To put these birds in context, they are smaller than a sparrow but with longer legs, and they migrate to Greenland, Iceland or Svalbard. They weigh around 70g on average.

But this was my favourite shot of the day. It's just a reed in one of the lagoons:

Days like that make me remember why this planet is worth caring for.

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